This is a working draft of a commentary that is open for public view prematurely because of the urgency of the topic discussed herein. Please excuse the typographic, grammatical, and even possible factual errors of this draft copy which would normally not be made public at this stage. Check back for frequent revisions; this document is 'live,' perhaps even changing as you read this. This preamble will disappear when this commentary is in its final form.

The planning of UB2020 has a number of flaws, among them the notion that students from outside the region are going to flock to Buffalo for an education. The primary source of new students according the administration: California and China. Somebody needs to explain to the emperor that his new clothes aren't exactly what he thinks they are, but nobody has the nerve (another metaphor not to be taken as a derogatory comment regarding the person ). The grand delusion is promulgated from the administrative tower down through the ranks of the academy and on to the local community. Everybody is caught up in the hysteria and anyone not seeing the "new clothes" (i.e., the grand plan), well, they're chastised as blind, belligerent, or just plain naysayers.

Seemingly based on the premise of a movie called "The Field of Dreams," the administration argues that if we built it, they will come. The plan is to build classrooms for an additional 10,000 students and, of course, somewhere along he line hire additional faculty. There are several flaws with this plan, the main problem described here is sufficient to derail the "pipe dream" without assistance from the remaining problems that need not be detailed in this commentary.

Why are 10,000 more students going to flock to Buffalo?

There's really no answer to that question -- "why?" It seems to be only answered by a line from the movie, because "if you build it, they will come." Maybe, but I wouldn't bank on it which is exactly what the UB2020 planners are doing -- they're counting on the revenue generated by this mythical horde of students to boost the local economy (e.g., they'll buy a lot of low-cost food in the supermarkets?) and to provide a solid basis for other projects in the UB2020 plan. Indeed, the tuition revenue is a primary motive behind this aspect of the UB2020 plan. There's no great notion of making Buffalo an educational Mecca, a real intellectual and creative center -- just another 10,000 warm bodies paying tuition rates set by the University operating outside the control of the SUNY system. (The faculty union stands opposed to granting UB autonomy in setting student tuition rates and so far this action has been successfully defeated in Albany.)

Somebody needs to talk to the students and see who they are and why they come here. The answers most often given are that they are local students who come here because it's convenient or New York City area students who come here to get away from their parents for a while. The University does not draw heavily from regions with other SUNY schools; we don't even attract large numbers from around New York State. The chances of having students from across the country come here and abandon what is considered one of the strongest university systems in the country are slim to nil. Perhaps we can recruit their rejects to pay our higher out-of-state tuition but good luck. And a horde of Chinese students? Talk to anyone who rents an apartment to these students and find out how much extra money they usually have to spend? No derogatory comment intended, but most of them are here on a tight budget -- just ask. Furthermore, despite TOEFL scores that are acceptable, the English-language skills of many of the foreign students we already accept are horrible, and accepting even more with a poorer command of English is not going to build our academic reputation favorably. We can't lower the academic bar any lower without becoming merely the back-up school for the talented-students we wish to recruit, and we're already accepting as many students from our existing 'markets' as we can with current academic admission standards.

In all fairness to our University recruiters and our faculty, we are drawing from a larger population today than we were a decade ago. UB is gaining prominence in the region, but it's a slow process that's unlikely to fill our classrooms with 10,000 more quality students any time soon. And it's a regional effect, drawing a few undergraduates away from SUNY campuses which rank higher in national ratings (e.g., Binghamton) but failing to draw large numbers of students even from neighboring states.

Who is going to teach the students?

The University has been working very hard to destroy its true academic and educational core and replace it with money-generating externally funded group of scientists that hold academic titles normally reserved for true "professors" that balance their research and creative work with teaching the students which make a university not just a research institute but a true university. Indeed, my Department has recently denied tenure to one of our strongest, most-dedicated assistant professors whose absence in our classrooms will be greatly missed. Down one more, full course-load carrying "professor," up one vacancy for a potentially self-sustaining fund raiser who can fill the slot for another 5-year 'probationary' term. But how much teaching is in their contract and will they really attract quality graduate students to take their place in the classroom?

My department is down somewhere between 25 and 35% from the number of faculty members we had in the early 1990s (accurate tabulation to follow) and the remaining faculty teach much less. This leaves only graduate students and part-time faculty to teach many of our undergraduate courses, and the budgets for hiring these people are even being cut while the number of our majors continues to increase. In short, we're just barely meeting the needs of our existing student population, how could we be expected to meet the needs of the projected increased enrollments?

The administration proposes to hire 750 new faculty members to help teach the 10,000 new students (a few additional faculty would be nice to teach our students now who often have difficulty getting into required courses and who are being presented with an every diminishing choice of courses to take). Is Albany going to approve 750 state-lines for which they have to commit continued funding? (Last time I checked, my payroll check was still being signed by the State of New York not by Buffalo University [pun intended] ). The promise that these new faculty members will support themselves through external funding does not relieve the State of guaranteeing their payroll will be met with State funds. These are permanent, tenure-track positions (unless the administration really believes that faculty will flock here without the promise of tenure-track positions) that must be approved by Albany.

Qualification is appropriate again: my department has an outstanding Undergraduate Program Administrator who manages to work magic getting students into required courses and completing their major in a reasonable time. Some other departments may be similarly fortunate but many are not. The assertion that some students have problems getting into required courses is in reference to students' reports from outside my department. Our Undergraduate Program Administrator has been able to work miracles with diminishing resources amidst increasing enrollments, and she exemplifies the type of support staff needed for a truly outstanding undergraduate program. Her considerable effort relieves much of the day-by-day pressure on faculty so that they can better fulfill their teaching and other obligations; our department leadership even scores a point here for having wisely empowered her to provide this much appreciated service to its faculty. (Gee, I sure hope this compliment from the Buffalo Blog Frog doesn't cost her a pay raise -- guilt by association? )

Why build downtown?

The University seems to be intent on building many of these new 'classrooms' on its new urban campus in downtown Buffalo. The reason for selecting this site? To revive the staggering Buffalo economy. Local construction jobs aside, will these students really eat enough hamburgers to revive the Buffalo economy? Perhaps, perhaps not. Somebody with a calculator must have 'run' the numbers, but it would certainly be enlightening to know what assumptions are made before everything is multiplied by 10,000.

The previous "master plan" for UB was to move its primary academic core to the suburban of Buffalo, Amherst, where it has sufficient space to expand. Of course this plan developed in the late 1960s through the early 1970s didn't foresee the real-estate vacancies that would become available in the downtown area of Buffalo and the great real estate potential of buying cheap space from delinquent owners, some of whom haven't even been paying property taxes. Even with the sluggish economy, the real-estate market has been booming for a few speculators.

A major reason for consolidating the University's operations on a single campus was to encourage more productive interactions among its faculty as well as make a wider variety of classroom instruction easily accessible to its students. The purpose was to bring UB together. The current plan of physically separating faculty and students even more than what is experienced with two, closely located campuses severely handicaps any such interactions among faculty and students alike. The South Campus is far enough away from the North Campus now to inhibit faculty collaborations and mutual enrichment, and students rushing to catch shuttle buses and showing up a few minutes late for class because of commuting create enough disturbances without confounding the problem by moving parts of the academic core even further away.

And the Band Plays On

UB2020 relies on several key components neatly falling into place for it to work. Any major piece of the puzzle failing to materialize destroys the entire project -- all components are interdependent, like inter-locking pieces of a puzzle. The whimsical projections of undergraduate student enrollments to increase our current size by over 1/3 simply are unlikely to materialize, at least not with the current university focus which largely relegates undergraduate teaching to a task of second-class faculty. And the students know this: talk to an 'average' tuition-paying student and see how they feel about access to faculty and being instructed in key courses by graduate student assistants.

Students from outside the area (necessary to increase enrollment by 10,000) will flock to the University when the University establishes itself as one of the national leaders in undergraduate education. A strong research faculty IS an important part of accomplishing this goal, but the 'care and feeding' of the undergraduate population beyond simply recruiting research-oriented faculty who delegate teaching to graduate student teaching assistants (often not speaking English very well) will not build UB's reputation as a premier undergraduate educational institution. The University needs to take more seriously its role of undergraduate instruction and to genuinely reward "professors" who are spending time and effort to accomplish this mission (including awarding tenure in some cases!). We can afford a "faculty elite" who buy-out or are otherwise relieved of their major teaching obligations only to the extent that we can adequately cover our undergraduate program with quality instruction.

UB2020 falters because it has failed to provide a rational plan for building this population of mythical students beyond, "build it and they will come." And like a house of card, removing one piece from the foundation causes the entire enterprise to come tumbling down. "And so the band plays on . . . "

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